Barclaycard hunts for fintech and innovation director
Barclaycard is keen to up its cards and payments game as it’s looking for a new director to drive fintech and innovation.
“Communicating with passion and enthusiasm”… yeah, whatever
The firm says: “While we are innovating and colleagues recognise this, there is a need to uplift and accelerate this agenda.”
The new role, to be based in London and officially called “director – fintech and innovation portfolio”, will include building relationships with fintech firms. Almost everyone is doing that nowadays and Barclaycard is keen to get involved.
Other tasks will include organising pilots and proofs of concept, looking after the budgets, and monitoring and governing its portfolio through its digital board.
With the future firmly in mind, the new boss will need to build and develop a “Future Payments” team as the company wants to stand out in this crowded and highly competitive space.
Whoever gets the job will work with the managing director of Future Payments and the cards and payments (C&P) businesses to identify relevant trends, and define responses to them.
Most of the job specs are the usual jargon-soaked nonsense that companies come out with. Such as “communicating with passion and enthusiasm” and “embracing change as a way of working”.
Dashing, rebranding
As you’d expect, Barclaycard has been innovative before.
In February, it developed a new solution to bypass the traditional bill-paying process in restaurants to allow customer to “dine and dash” so staff no longer need to deliver the tab or handle transactions at the table.
While last year, it rebranded itself to Barclays in the US as part of its retail digital banking strategy for this year.
At that time, Barclaycard sad it had been targeting prime and super-prime borrowers with an online personal loan offering on a test-and-learn basis to a small group of customers. Barclaycard plans to launch the same offering publicly by the middle of this year.
